BROOKINGS – If you drove past the Hillcrest Aquatic Center last weekend, it looked like a typical Saturday in June.

There were tents scattered throughout Hillcrest Park and there were young swimmers racing back and forth to get to the pool. But this wasn’t a case of kids looking to kill a summer afternoon. This was a sign of the impact that Wendy Ahrendsen has had on competitive swimming in South Dakota.

Over 200 area athletes took part in the Brookings Swimming Club’s annual Summer Invitational last weekend and nearly all of them have been coached by Ahrendsen. Even the coaches, who occasionally took part in their own heats, had some tie to Ahrendsen, who has worked with some of the top swimmers in the state.

This made Saturday a perfect backdrop as Ahrendsen was recognized for her 25 years as a coach for the BSC. With many of her former students gathered around her, Ahrendsen celebrated not only her own impact but the accomplishments of the swimmers she had coached as they competed throughout the three-day event.

“Wendy is the epitome of Brookings swimming,” Shane Kuehl of the BSC said. “She gets our younger kids involved in swimming and teaches them her love for the sport.”

Ahrendsen’s passion for swimming began as a kid when she took part in a summer league program and later became a lifeguard in her hometown of Manning, Iowa. She moved to Brookings in 1998 to pursue her master's degree in math and statistics and started coaching as an assistant with the BSC.

“I just liked working with the kids,” Ahrendsen said. “I love working with the kids and encouraging them to learn how to swim and watching them improve as they got older.”

Ahrendsen quickly made an impact on some of the younger swimmers in Brookings including BSC current head coach Cassie Hendricks, who began swimming with her older sisters Ellie and Jessie when she was eight years old.

“I had taken some swimming lessons before but she was the first person that really gave me a love for the sport,” Hendricks said. “It changed just casual swimming into something competitive.”

Hendricks and her sisters wound up swimming competitively through high school and continued their career at South Dakota State. Cassie wound up becoming a graduate assistant with the Jackrabbits’ swimming program in 2018 and worked beside Ahrendsen as she became the program’s head coach in 2019 in addition to being an assistant coach at SDSU.

While Ahrendsen taught some of the younger swimmers like Hendricks the basics of the sport, she would also take time to make it fun, making crafts as gifts for swimmers that qualified for the state meet and cracking jokes along the way.

“She just has fun all the time with everything she would do,” Hendricks said of Ahrendsen. “She would do crafts with us after practice and braid everybody’s hair and everything like that. It was so much fun.”

Becka Foerster (Mansheim) was another young swimmer who was impacted by Ahrendsen as she swam for the BSC throughout high school.

“I remember her patience,” Foerster laughed. “There were things now that I look back on that probably would have riled up my feathers as a coach and she was always so patient with us when we weren’t doing all of our sets the hardest and things like that. She kept swimming enjoyable and wanted to make sure we wanted to come back every day for practice.”

Foerster went on to become a cross-country runner at SDSU but didn’t lose her passion for swimming. She returned to the BSC as an assistant coach shortly after graduation and while Foerster no longer coaches, Ahrendsen now coaches her children.

“It was the same thing at that time,” Foerster said of her time as a coach. “She was very patient and very welcoming to me and I’ve been on board with the coaching staff and watched as she’s coached my kids as they’ve come through the program.”

It’s likely that Foerster’s daughter Kalla, who finished first in four different events in the 13-14 age group last weekend, will eventually have the same stories as countless other swimmers that participated in this year’s invitational. 

Ahrendsen’s impact has reached throughout the state as she’s coached USA Central Zone swimming, which takes some of the top swimmers throughout the midwest as well as South Dakota All-Star teams, but her biggest impact remains in Brookings, where she continues to coach while teaching math and statistics at SDSU.

“It’s very unique,” Foerster said. “In the world of swimming, you see a lot of coaches move around. Obviously, with her anchor to SDSU, that’s helped her have a connection here, but it’s long days, long weekends and she gets no breaks. To have a full-time job and have another where it’s more than just a part-time job, the time that they put in to do this and have that kind of longevity speaks a lot.”

The same sentiment was echoed by Hendricks, who has worked with countless coaches during her career as well.

“We’ve had a lot of turnover of coaches over the past 25 years,” Hendricks said. “Since I was little, I probably had 15 coaches while I was on the team, but Wendy has been the concrete of this team since she started.”

That’s what made Saturday feel like a family reunion for Ahrendsen and her swimmers and what keeps her going throughout the past 25 years.

“Brookings Swim Club is a big family,” Ahrendsen said. “Everyone likes to work together and all of South Dakota swimming is a big family. Everyone knows each other and especially working with the [Zone team] and the [All-Star] teams, I’ve worked with kids from all over the state.”